, whose face and countenance shall be such as sheweth
the master not to be blind in his choice. But lest I should offend too
much, I pass over to say any more of these Italianates and their
demeanour, which, alas! is too open and manifest to the world, and yet
not called into question.

Citizens and burgesses have next place to gentlemen, who be those that
are free within the cities, and are of some likely substance to bear
office in the same. But these citizens or burgesses are to serve the
commonwealth in their cities and boroughs, or in corporate towns where
they dwell, and in the common assembly of the realm wherein our laws
are made (for in the counties they bear but little sway), which
assembly is called the High Court of Parliament: the ancient cities
appoint four and the borough two burgesses to have voices in it, and
give their consent or dissent unto such things as pass, to stay there
in the name of the city or borough for which they are appointed.

In this place also are our merchants to be installed as amongst the
citizens (although they often change estate with gentlemen, as
gentlemen do with them, by a mutual conversion of the one into the
other), whose number is so increased in these our days that their
only maintenance is the cause of the exceeding prices of foreign
wares, which otherwise, when every nation was permitted to bring in
her own commodities, were far better, cheaper, and more plentifully
to be had. Of the want of our commodities here at home, by their
great transportation of them into other countries, I speak not, sith
the matter will easily betray itself. Certes among the Lacedaemonians
it was found out that great numbers of merchants were nothing to the
furtherance of the state of the commonwealth: wherefore it is to be
wished that the huge heap of them were somewhat restrained, as also
of our lawyers, so should the rest live more easily upon their own,
and few honest chapmen be brought to decay by breaking of the
bankrupt. I do not deny but that the navy of the land is in part
maintained by their traffic, and so are the high prices of wares kept
up, now they have gotten the only sale of things upon pretence of
better furtherance of the commonwealth into their own hands: whereas
in times past, when the strange bottoms were suffered to come in, we
had sugar for fourpence the pound, that now at the writing of this
Treatise is well worth half-a-crown; raisins or currants for a penny
that now